Sr. Simone Campbell, NETWORK against SCOTUS on Hobby Lobby

Earlier today I saw a Tweet from Sr. Simone Campbell’s group NETWORK, the Nuns On The Bus crowd, along with the LCWR types… the Magisterium of Nuns, who place themselves over and against the teaching office of Bishops.

Are Sr. Simone and NETWORK and all these women pro-abortion? Pro-abortifacients? Against religious liberty? Against the US Bishops?

That’s what this looks like, doesn’t it. Let Sr. Campbell tell us.

Or… maybe they retweeted it because the disagree that the SCOTUS decision was wrong?

so when will ‘Sr.’ Simone et. al. be publicly, officially, leaving-no-doubt-in-anyone’s-mind-they’re-not-in-good-standing excommunicated? What on earth does it take??…yet the FFI continues to be persecuted and treated like dangerous threats to the Faith. Quam diu Domine?

There is an article here by the maker of a film about Sr Simone. The article author reports that “When I caught Sister Simone today in the middle of hectic DC lobbying, she was disappointed and frustrated and noted that some are saying the Hobby Lobby decision will actually lead to more abortions. But she was even more focused on her current battle: comprehensive immigration reform.”

Could not be any more preposterous, since the Green family that runs Hobby Lobby has no objections to most forms of artificial contraception, they specific object to the ones that are known to be abortifacient. Sister Simone’s position (and this is also consistent with everything else she has ever said) seems to be that she supports forcing employers to purchase contraception partly on the patently false premise that contraception prevents abortion. As is well known, the contraceptive mentality of rejecting the fruitfulness of the sexual union both increases nonmarital and recreational sexual activity and disposes people to reject a baby’s life even after he or she is conceived.

Hey, Sister, thanks for the appeasement! Really paying off for the average Catholic, isn’t it? Once your president and his party is done wiping the floor with conscientious objectors, you will get to be crowned hierarch for the People’s Catholic Church of America. So you got that going for you, which is nice. I could not urge women to pump themselves up with carcinogenic synthetic hormones and be able to call myself a feminist, but hey…When you all gather in your worship spaces for the state controlled official church, at least you will feel “free” to so gather and worship as you please…

Also, please see my pictures of the Nuns on the Bus stop in Janesville, WI (which was the largest attended stop they had due to the “recall Walker” protesters from Madison going), featuring my dear friend Jeanne following Sr Simone around with “Stand Up For Religious Freedom/Stop Obama’s HHS Mandate” signs. She held them up behind Sr Simone during the press conference… until some people held up a peace flag in front of them blocking them. This ruined the photo op in front of Rep. Paul Ryan’s office, which would otherwise have been the backdrop. Sr Simone had no sympathy for our religious freedom message against the HHS mandate.

Father Z. has previously cited (Sep 6 2012) the Weekly Standard article quoting Sr. Campbell as saying that the question whether abortion should be illegal is “beyond my pay grade.” Of course, if abortion is beyond her pay grade, then what in God’s name makes her an expert on budgets, taxes, social programs, and how to meet the needs of the poor, sick, and elderly. (Sr. Campbell and her fellow religious progressives if they actually proposed things to cut such as the NEA, FCC, and farm subsidies. I’m happy to cut military spending as well.)

In an interview with the Huffington Post (May 3, 2003), she replied, “Nah. We’re not in on that” when asked what she thought of pro-life legislation in many states. She explained that Network is a federal lobby and doesn’t take positions on abortion. See huffpost.com/us/entry/3209167/

As you all know, Sr. Campbell is happy to invoke the “pro-life” label for everything else.

How dare you all criticize Sr. Simone Campbell, a Catholic on good standing who loves Pope Francis & Vatican II! Don’t you all know that women and homosexuals can never do anything wrong?! They are above reproach! If the President of the United States of America, the greatest man of the greatest impeccable country on Earth, is humble enough to recognize that fact, then you must agree too! or else you are not humble like our non-judgmental Pope Francis!

Will these religious ever be confronted with a “Congressman Fr. Drinan moment”–when they are given a choice by the Holy Father between their vocation or their activism? Fr. Drinan (RIP) to his credit chose his vocation over being a Congressman. I don’t know if he ever regretted his anti-life votes, but to hope for the best for his soul, I will say the few times I attended mass with him offering the mass on the Hill in his waning years, though I was often left wondering if I had other mass options upon seeing that he was the priest, his masses and homilies that I heard were typically pretty solid. Hopefully God was able to use the choice presented to Fr. Drinan to work great good, and hopefully the same might be the case for these nuns. I will pray for Fr. Drinan today, and maybe we all should.

Illogically, this decision will fire up more simplistic “war on women” rhetoric, which while only partially true will result in greater women turn out in November ’14 and ’16 . Despite HRC’s criticism of this decision, it’s political gold for her.

Great idea, Frjim4321! Maybe you and your party apologists who have delivered the O and friends have some pull with Biden who went to China and said that he “understood” the one child policy…charming! At least Hobby Lobby now has some solidarity with so many innocent victims in China. Whereas the Biden and friends just pile on don’t they? That’s your party my friend!

benedetta, I don’t like political hyperbole coming from either party … certainly neither party has a monopoly on hypocrisy … and you may find it interesting to learn that I consider Joe to be more of a liability than an asset.

Interesting on how Frjim4321 does not go all out to defend Catholics persecuted or oppressed…no, what really strikes a nerve, and what really gets him going, is when a Democratic Party operative, even a sister’s tweets are mocked! Then the fangs come out…

Contrary to Sister Simone’s, NARAL & Network and Frjim4321 mythological propaganda, not everyone, not only Catholic women by any means, wish to pump themselves or others up with synthetic hormones and carcinogens which induce abortions. Why should that come as a fainting shock for people? The way in which these party shills even purporting to hang out in our own Church attack others is really shocking. The animus they are trying to whip up is staggering and bodes very badly for our futures together, and even their own futures though they think their screaming at religious objectors now will somehow earn them some goodies in the short term making it worth it. Funny how the Big Abortion is such a sacred calf that it must be protected guarded and defended at ALL COSTS…look at Frjim4321. Prime example.

I agree that it is long past time for the Holy See to take action against Sr Campbell, Network and the whole LCWR, and I mean real action. Archbishop Sartain’s influence did not in a single way influence the latest national conference of the LCWR. It didn’t prevent them from honoring a dissident theologian. They did not seek, nor did he insist they get his input on the appropriateness of speakers. Their relationship to Network which he has required by “reviewed” is as strong as ever.
It’s time to stop “dialoging ” and time to start directing, or in more plain language telling, ordering, demanding they conform to the will of the Magisterium. And way past time to start correcting in the canon law medicinal sense.

But it’s wrong because it was way too narrowly drawn. Conscience protections should be as wide as possible. This ruling was about one topic and applies to a very small number of individuals and corporations.

Nothing that we do in a free country should compel us to veer from what is right.

Sister Simone Campbell makes her position known on the Hobby Lobby SCOTUS ruling very clear on this Time.com interview: “Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of NETWORK, a national Catholic social justice lobby, is concerned that corporate owners now have more faith and health-related protections than their employees. “It is fairly stunning that the Supreme Court in today’s Hobby Lobby ruling held that a corporation’s owners can extend their religious preferences to the corporation’s employees regardless of their employees’ religious views,” Campbell says. “It raises the serious concern about employees being able to get needed services.”

Discussing the Hobby Lobby ruling in our local newspaper online forum, someone commented that although Catholics were supposed to be against birth control, most of the Catholics they knew personally were not really even adamantly against abortion.

So sad.

These women are part of the reason for that. The Bishops should take the veils off their heads.

I don’t understand the liberal outrage, Hobby Lobby provides 16 forms of birth control free of charge. The 4 they objected too, caused abortion. Is Sr. Campbell, and frjim, pro-abortion? Do you really believe that women should have the right to abort?

What do you expect? A heretical liberal is a heretical liberal. And so are all the people who cheer for these “Nuns” on a bus. How dare us require women to go to WalMart and put down $ 13 a month for their pills. That is what passes for “denying rights.” Well, I want my FF and Big Macs for free, otherwise the government is denying my right to free exchange. Never mind that it is available to me for a $ 5 bill and some change, sans any government “help.” Ford, what a messed up country this has become.

Let’s look at the facts, and employ the use of reason, as opposed to the scapegoating towards believers which politicoes and their operatives are currently doing with a vengeance. N.B., any time in history a politician in discussing policy or legal ruling turns to demonize certain persons on the basis of their religious beliefs, as opposed to discussing legal precedents in an objective manner, it doesn’t work out well for democracy, liberalism, or tolerance. Such tactics employed even in the name of politics are shameful and degrading to those who employ is as well as those to whom it is directed.

The facts are as follows: we have a certain number of Catholic-identifying politicians who have employed, since the days of Cuomo I, casuistry and denial of science and strange bending over backwards rationalizing in their pronouncements and theorizing or theologizing, in order to say that though they agree that the taking of a life in the womb is neither just nor moral, that they would not use their political vote to “interfere with” another’s power to do so. The implication was always that it was an evil to be tolerated but not encouraged by politics. Biden did this fairly recently during the last election cycle.

At the same time we have the situation whereby other non Catholic identifying Democratic politicians have acknowledged at certain points in their careers that the taking of a life in the womb is per se unjust and immoral, and that this should not happen with abandon or typically.

However at a later point in their careers they suddenly fall silent, inexplicably, on this point and abandon the hope that was in them to begin with.

Now we have moved to a situation where all of these politicoes are conduits for the great expansion of abortion, even while the death toll is near tens of millions. Whereas those who objected to nuclear arms of a certain era their party permitted to be heard, their party stamps out any mention of the statistical fact of genocide in places like nyc. Even internationally, they foment and aid supplying more and more life taking in the womb wherever possible. Even while their platforms from a humanitarian sense lack coherence and logic.

Finally commensurate with this Hobby Lobby decision and the aftermath in which politicians are sounding the drumbeat of harsh treatment towards believers, blaming and scapegoating, instead of talking policy, this past year in New York, the already known abortion capital of the world and ground zero of a genocide, defying what we know about science, torture, and defying what advancements have been made in the areas of compassion towards other creatures including in the realm of prisoners of war or murderers on death row, the proposal was pushed quite vociferously, and attempted to be categorized as “moderate” to aim a gun at the heart of a child in the womb within hours or days of birth in order that they suffer pain and die and be deprived of any life or future and causing great harm to the mother psychically, physically, spiritually.

It never goes well when science is ignored and people with conscientious objections for the good of society get scapegoated does it. Let’s look at the whole context.

I certainly hope that Sr. Simone’s superiors and Bishop recalls her to a life of prayer and penance in the wake of her partisan political involvement that harms the Body of Christ.

I really enjoy listening to Relevant Radio throughout the day, but sometimes they really blow it.

Case in point, last week Sr. Simone was a guest on the morning show, and she was allowed to drone on for almost 30 minutes, spewing her Leftist demagoguery without the slightest challenge or interruption from the host, who fawned shamelessly over her.

frjim4321:
“anti-choice rhetoric” – If you must refer to it as “rhetoric,” can’t you, as a Catholic priest, at least give us “anti-abortion.”

“Also the degree to which certain contraceptive medications may be abortifacient is open to discussion and disagreement” – Again, shouldn’t the possibility that it IS an abortifacient be given the benefit of the doubt? My god, man!

As to whether you actually want to see the abortion rate lowered, FrJim4321, and Sr Simone, you are right that all anyone may do is speculate. Supporting Democrats really hasn’t been a proven winner as far as dramatically reducing the rate of abortions. I guess it’s easy to hide behind casuistry with respect to an embryo, if not cowardly, however, as to the fetal pain that your party is fully behind when it comes to second and third trimester? Seems like you and Sr. Simone surely have a lot of area in which to stake out, even a little, ground on that. Tweeting and mocking those who recognize the abortifacient qualities of a known carcinogen on women seems to me to be a waste of time as far as your goal.

It’s a shame Fr Jim uses the partisan rhetoric of the left since I don’t think he’s entirely wrong, though mostly particularly in micro if not the macro. By use of such loaded verbiage, he calls to willful association with the odious party of unrestricted sex, pederasty and rampant homosexuality and infanticide. The Media Matters drivel is entirely that. Hobby Lobby offers way more contraception as a heretical Christian sect than would be permissible by the Magisterium of the Roman Church and merely halts at what they consider abortifacients.

From a Federalist perspective, the Federal government has ZERO enumerated authority delegated by the Constitution to force a private business to provide ANY insurance, much less that which they deem morally unacceptable. Any employee is welcome to either procure such on their own or seek alternative employment that offers the insurance plan they want. That’s liberty. “Wymyn’s Rights” does not mean an employer is forced to pay for his employees contraception any more than “Gay Rights” mean compulsory service (as poorly delivered as it may be), is obligated from bakers and photographers.

One would think that clinic closures would be met with at least some modicum of relief by Frjim4321 & Sr Simone, instead the party they promote is engaged in a crazy extreme push to offer gunshot to the heart at any time up to birth causing fetal pain by nurses and other non physicians. Looking to make up lost revenue /offset lives saved there?

I’m afraid I can’t entirely disagree with Fr Jim on this count. For all that I think the Hobby Lobby decision good insofar as it forbids imposing direct abortificients, I’m horrified that it does not also extend to forbidding imposition of contraception in general.
No, I don’t believe abortion will go down because of this, nor do I believe that we won any real victory in this case. Contraceptives weren’t the deciding factor in this, as the articles I’ve read have emphasized. In other words, I don’t have much confidence that a mandate regarding general contraception will be overturned.
For the life of me, I can’t understand why anyone thinks Monday’s decision advanced the cause of life very much.

frjim4321 is another Obama-controlled drone. Except instead of riddling women & children with bullets in the middle East, he will openly fire contraceptives at women, endangering their health, treating them like disposable sex objects, install an attitude that hates the unwanted children and will likewise encourage the very problems that lead to abortion. I bet frjim4321 also owns plenty of merchandise made by China too, but don’t dare point fingers at him. He’s perfect! Everything he does is impeccable. He knows better than God. He probably imagines he’s more merciful too. That is why instead of doing the harder work of converting them to follow our Lord and refrain from that which enslaves them, he will unburden them by simply shrugging his hands and absolving them of their every action because he’s very much a realist on-the-ground person who shall offer them choices to indulge in contraceptives, but shall offer no choice to the Hobby Lobby who he shall force to participate in their sin. frjim4321 is the kind of man who will burn down an entire forest to save a tree.

Poor poor frjim4321, up there on his cross consoling the abortionists and sexually immoral that they will be with him in his paradise where everything is permitted, including treating women like concubines and murdering little children to make them more effective in their concubinage, but where you shall never have to worry about a ‘Made in China’ label or being able to run a business without violating your religious beliefs.

The seamless garment has been ripped to shreds by the advocacy of clerics and religious like these engaged in partisan politics at the expense of women’s health and dignity, and humane and just treatment of our children. Somehow, mammon is everything in this equation whereby lives are forfeited to enrich the federal fisc that is then distributed to those who managed to make the arbitrary and ruthless cut of abortion and contraceptive based feminism. So very more destructive beyond their incitement to hate on believers at this point.

jflare, the Court is presented with a case. They rule on that case. In ruling they need to address fundamental questions. The issue in this case is not abortifacients or contraceptives but whether the protections of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act apply to closely held corporations. Five justices affirm this and two justices refrain from rejecting it. Other cases will deal with religious non-profits and it is commonly believed that the Court will support their right to those protections.

Sister Simone is wrong in that we may not do evil so that good can come from it. It may be the case that mandating employers to pay for contraceptives will reduce abortions. But a Christian employer may not be able to comply with that mandate for reasons of conscience. To force him to comply is a direct attack on a Christian brother and Sister Simone is very wrong to cooperate in that attack.

We do not always get to chose our battles. It may be the case that resisting the contraceptive mandate will not win us any friends in the court of public opinion. We are to witness to the truth and not count the cost.

It’s one thing for a person to be convinced that a woman’s dignity hinges upon synthetic hormones and killing one’s offspring before birth. It’s another to then foment hatred and harassment towards those whose values are different, towards those who believe that women’s dignity does not flow from those sorts of actions.

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